the art of writing is discovering what you believe
This article sums up my feelings almost…
This article sums up my feelings almost exactly. Microsoft is not successful today because people love its products, because most… [T & G Blog]
Troy links to this article, written by a former ‘Sotftie who has, in his words, “rebooted Windows one too many times.”
Continue reading “nowhere to go but down”
At 2:45 this morning, I was sure we were having a small earthquake: there was no sound, just a jolt and some gentle but insistent vibration that lasted 15-20 seconds.
Turns out it was a meteor . . . .
The Seattle Times: Local News: Flashes, booms reported over Western Washington:
Bright flashes and sharp booms were reported in the skies over the Puget Sound area early today, and aviation officials said a meteor may have been the source.
Checking the UW’s geophysics website, I found that this is an unexplained event that was not an earthquake.
We never saw any lights from it, though folks as far away as Idaho did. Ah, the joys of living in such a geologically active place.
<update>: check out the video (handily recorded by local security cams: we never sleep[tm]).
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:
Having said all that, beside the possibility that the White House’s favored Iraqi exile was an Iranian agent, that the spy chief just got canned, that the OSD is wired to polygraphs, and that the president has had to retain outside counsel in the investigation into which members of his staff burned one of the country’s own spies, I’d say the place is being run like a pretty well-oiled machine.
and on that note:
We’re not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We’re there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil.
—Midge Decter on the Warren Olney show, 89.9, Los Angeles, 5/21/04
The New York Times > Movies > 600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD’s
This is interesting. The movie studios are taking advantage of the technology — high-end scanners, displays, and high-powered but affordable computers — to recapture the quality of old films. The DVDs produced are excellent:
The scenes look as brilliant as anything I’ve seen on a video disc — and better than any video of a color movie that was shot 35 to 40 years ago. Colors are saturated and natural. Gardens have dozens of shades of green. Flesh tones are uncannily lifelike. Shadows look like shadows, not gray blots. Motions are smooth, not jumpy.
I realize the studios are going to sell these, likely for a premium, and indulge in all kinds of copy-protection/DRM hijinks: to some degree, I’m OK with that, if they make an effort to produce good products. I just wish the music cartel — with it’s much deeper back catalog — would do something similar: take old master materials, restore and record them, and let us hear them. I expect the fees paid to lawyers and process servers would have paid for a lot of this, and in turn generated enough revenue to do some more.
Online Business Networks Blog » Blogging and (Google) bombing for a good cause:
As you may have heard by now, apparently an anti-semitic hate group known as Jew Watch comes up as the top result on a search for the word “Jew” at Google. A staff reporters at j. magazine called this to the attention of Google executives, who were indifferent to the situation.
Linking to Wikipedia’s entry for Jew is the least I can do.
So this is the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, just a few miles from where I now live.
I remember hearing the news, as I drove home from work on my 32nd birthday — it took three days before anyone found him — thinking how bad a thing it was but how I would now have a reminder every year. I could not have foreseen moving here back then, so that adds a little extra poignance to it. I wasn’t a huge fan, but no one could deny the talent and the raw power he — and the band — brought to bear on the age-old feelings most of us forget as we get older. I can still see the blurb in the weekend planner of my then-local paper, with a mention of Nirvana, a not yet famous but much talked about band, appearing at a club.
Skimming through the news articles (for some reason, today’s paper was delivered when we only take the Sunday edition: perhaps I need to read more about it?), I’m struck by how sick he must have been and how little he did to hide it. I think of how people like Cobain and Layne Staley, who mean so much to so many people, yet die alone at the height of their power and popularity. It’s easy to second-guess those around someone in obvious pain and wonder if anyone could have done anything to change the outcome. At the job I held last year, a world-renowned human rights advocate on the faculty took her own life and there were similar questions: why was she left alone, who talked to her last, and how did they leave her, etc. Unprofitable but understandable.
Fame doesn’t guarantee much, it seems.
~Life Paths, Birth Totem Falcon, Animal Totems & Earth Medicine
Gary made a reference to his totem creature and I looked mine up.
I can’t complain about what I see, and looking over the others that correspond to my family members, I’m struck by how they resonate with the reality I see everyday.
It could be seen as astrology but I think it has a different dimension: the totem schema seems more geared to self-awareness and fulfilling one’s potential, where astrology tends to be about wish-fulfilment.
Microsoft Notebook: Eyes are on Longhorn:
Microsoft has disclosed details about Longhorn so far in advance of its release in part to ensure that software developers are able to release programs in conjunction with its debut. The downside is that consumers, seeing what’s on the horizon, may be less willing in the meantime to upgrade to Windows XP from older versions of the operating system.
“Microsoft may have spoken about Longhorn far too early,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research.
Michael Cherry, Directions on Microsoft’s lead analyst for operating systems, drew a comparison to automobile sales. “Everybody knows the new models come out in the fall,” Cherry said. “If it’s July, are you really going to rush out and buy a new car, or are you going to wait and see what the new ones look like?”
And earlier in the same article:
Although the company isn’t saying when the next major version of Windows will be released, analysts point to a number of signs that suggest the release is at least two years away. For one thing, many people in the Windows team have been focusing on a security-related “service pack” update to be released for Windows XP later this year.
Lots of opportunity for other vendors to build in features that either co-opt Longhorn or compete against it . . . .
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